{"id":759,"date":"2015-10-10T21:18:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T21:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.injectionartistry.com\/botoxblog\/?p=759"},"modified":"2015-10-11T18:25:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T18:25:27","slug":"calvin-lee-md-piano-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.injectionartistry.com\/botoxblog\/calvin-lee-md-piano-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting fired from piano lessons – led to great things"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My Piano Biography for the Los Angeles Moments of Music Piano Competition for Amateurs and Teachers<\/h3>\n

I had almost forgotten about the piano until one day, while settling into our home in Modesto, my plastic-surgeon-wife announced that she was going to buy herself a piano.\u00a0 She figured since I was a violin playing general surgeon, she needed her own instrument.\u00a0 Due to space constraints, we had to decide between dining table or piano.\u00a0 Well, I figured worse case scenario, a grand piano could double up as a very expensive dining table.\u00a0 Embarrassingly, as a small child, I had been fired from piano lessons (totally my fault) before I could even reach an octave with my fingers. \u00a0Fortunately, leaving the piano gave me an opportunity with the violin which led to a highlight of my life: performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Brown University Orchestra.\u00a0 And that led to somehow impressing a girl who later became my wife.\u00a0 Funny how getting fired could lead to wonderful things; I even think that the violin helped me get accepted to all the great colleges I applied to which included Harvard, Stanford, and of course my Brown University.<\/p>\n

Being clueless as to how to pick out a piano, we were introduced to a Modesto piano teacher, Dr. Yan Yan Chan, who helped us.\u00a0 However, being from New York and being an only child, I ended up hogging the piano we purchased; my poor wife barely gets time to play.\u00a0 On the piano, I found that one of the hardest things was bass clef and the way that the fingering markings for piano and violin are off by one digit (pinky = “4” for violin).\u00a0 I took a few lessons from Yan Yan to help me get started and also had pointers from a close family friend Dr. Kung-Chin Lin, an university piano professor in Taiwan.\u00a0 Then I was pretty much on my own due to my somewhat unpredictable schedule as a surgeon.\u00a0 Yan Yan and I got reunited recently when we heard about the Los Angeles Moments of Music Piano Concerto Competition through another genius piano\u00a0teacher in our area, Janisse Foresti.\u00a0 I have since acquired a separate dining table but\u00a0I still have trouble playing octaves.<\/p>\n

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Our piano in the dining room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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YouTube:<\/h3>\n

Beethoven Piano Concerto #2, 1st Movement<\/a>
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